Google Glass: Is This a Step Too Far? (If So, then Why Does It Look So Amazing?)

At what point does technology so impact the human person that it fundamentally changes what it means to be a person? Has that point already come and gone? And when we look at what we can do, does can mean ought? Is there a point at which technology so infiltrates personhood that it actually begins to weaken the species? Has technology become fully woven into the story of how humans evolve? Is that good? Is that what we want?

I say this all, btw, via wireless connection on my computer while listening to The Lumineers on my iPhone and have already checked my email once since I started writing this post.

Enter Google Glass… (see video below).

How the human race will survive the acquisition of technology without destroying ourselves or the planet remains to be seen. But I’m not sure I’ve ever watched a product promo that simultaneously spooked me and thrilled me like this one did. It spooked me because it seems like a very real possibility that ten years now almost everyone I know will be wearing Google Glass or something similar – another twenty-five and what, it will be embedded in your cornea? A century later and we’ve encoded your genetics to produce the technology metabolically? The entire human experience will not be really lived, it will be lived merely to be posted and compared.

What bothers me the most is that it looks amazing – I want mine.